The Art of Wishing

by Lindsay Ribar

  Once we were settled, Miss Delisio introduced George, like there was anyone here who didn’t know him. He flashed us a grin and settled himself at the piano. We wouldn’t be singing today, since we hadn’t officially learned the songs yet, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t underscore us. He began to play the opening bars of the show, and a little shiver flitted up my spine.

  With Naomi reading stage directions, we jumped right in. As usual, speaking the lyrics was odd since, without rhythms and melody, lyrics just sound like really weird poetry. But this was the way the first rehearsal always went: just a read-through, so we could all learn the story together. Most of us were used to it. Some people, like Simon, even managed to make it sound kind of good.

  Vicky, however, was no Simon. She read all of her lyrics in an awful monotone, like she couldn’t quite figure out what the words meant. And it wasn’t just the lyrics, either. The way she read the dialogue was just as bad. It was all I could do not to cover my ears and run screaming out of the theater.

  When we finally reached the end of Act One, Miss Delisio called a ten-minute break. I thought about going outside, but when Vicky got up, I decided to stay right where I was. Running into her in the hallway and accidentally punching her in the face were definitely not part of my I’m-okay-with-this plan.

  As I skimmed the second half of the script, I saw a student approach Miss Delisio. A student who wasn’t in the cast, which was a little unusual. It took me a minute, but I recognized him as the boy from earlier. The one I’d almost mowed down on my way to the bathroom.

  He spoke with Miss Delisio and George for a few moments before digging through the pockets of the hoodie he wore, then through the backpack he’d slung over one shoulder. He pulled out what looked like a camera case. I heard the word yearbook come out of someone’s mouth, and I groaned softly as I realized what was going on. They were starting rehearsal photo shoots this early in the game? Not fair.

  When the cast had settled back in their seats and quieted, Miss Delisio took a moment to confirm my fears.

  “Guys, this is Oliver Parish.” The boy gave a shy little wave to nobody in particular. “He just transferred here in January. He’s going to be photographing our rehearsal process for the drama club’s section of the yearbook. And maybe, if we’re lucky, he’ll get enough to put together a slide show for our cast party.”

  Naomi nudged me and rolled her eyes, which made me grin. I looked at Simon, to see what he thought of this turn of events, but he was busy typing out a text message on his phone. Beside him, though, Vicky was watching Oliver. And she wasn’t wearing that timid, deer-in-the-headlights expression from before. She was absolutely beaming.

  I looked at the photographer. He smiled back at Vicky, like there was a secret in the room, and they were the only two people who knew it.

  The porch lights were already on when I got home that night, and my mom’s car sat ominously in the driveway. And the house, as I’d feared, was a mess. There were coats draped over the back of the couch, shoes strewn all around the floor, and four suitcases in the hallway, one of which was open and spilling clothes everywhere. I tried not to think about how I’d cleaned this room just three days ago.

  Ziggy was the first to greet me when I opened the door, jumping off her perch on the couch and rubbing herself against my legs. She purred as I bent to scritch her little tabby head. “Did Mommy and Daddy come home?” I whispered to her. “Did they remember to feed you?”

  “Margo?” came Mom’s voice from the kitchen. “Honey, is that you?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, it’s a burglar. I’ve come to steal all your silverware and jewelry. And your cat,” I added, giving Ziggy another scratch.

  “As long as you don’t steal our daughter,” she replied. Emerging from the kitchen with a huge grin on her face and Dad trailing behind her, she gave me a quick hug and a peck on the forehead.

  “How was the cruise?” I asked, unzipping my boots and placing them neatly on the shoe rack by the door. I’d deal with my parents’ shoes later.

  She sighed dramatically. “Absolute heaven. Maybe even better than the last one. I know they say you should wait for summer to visit Alaska, but what’s a little cold?”

  “Cold schmold,” added Dad. “That’s what the parkas were for. Not to mention the indoor cabin.”

  Mom gave him a secretive little smile. “The honeymoon suite, you mean.”

  “Honeymoon suite, still?” I asked, doing my best to ignore the dewy-eyed looks they were exchanging. “What is this, the third honeymoon you’ve been on since the wedding?”

  Mom thought for a moment. “Fourth, if you count the Grand Canyon trip.”

  “Which I do,” said Dad. “Oh, and we have pictures!” He ran over to the open suitcase and began rifling through it. “Wait till you see these, Margo. Some of the ones your mother took are just, wow.”

  Ever since the wedding last May, our lives had been one continuous cycle of Mom and Dad planning a trip, Mom and Dad leaving on their trip, a week or two of peace and quiet, Mom and Dad coming back from their trip, and the grand finale, Mom and Dad showing me pictures of their trip. The pictures were always the same, too: Mom pretending to fall over the railing of a cruise ship, Dad wearing another cheesy Hawaiian shirt, stuff like that. Sometimes it felt like they were the teenagers and I was the adult.

  “How’s school?” asked Mom. “Anything exciting happen while we were gone?”

  “Nope,” I said quickly. “Same old same old.”

  I thought about telling her about the cast list fiasco, but this wasn’t the time. At best, they’d both go “Aw, that’s too bad” and jump right back into honeymoon talk. At worst, they wouldn’t even understand why I was so upset. As far as they were concerned, it didn’t matter what role I had, as long as their daughter was onstage. These were, after all, the people who’d thrown me a party after I’d played Frightened Theatergoer Number Two in my first-grade musical about Abraham Lincoln.

  “Where did I put that camera?” muttered Dad.

  “Red suitcase, inside pocket, next to the toothbrushes,” replied Mom almost absently, and then turned back to me. “You’ll never guess what movie was playing on the plane today. The Parent Trap. Can you believe it?”

  “Oh, I almost forgot about that!” said Dad, unzipping the red suitcase.

  “It was the old Hayley Mills one,” said Mom. “The good one, not the remake they did with that awful drug addict girl.”

  I was about to point out that Lindsay Lohan probably hadn’t been a drug addict at the time, but Mom continued, “And we said, take away the twin thing and the summer camp, and that’s our Margo! Making us back into one big, happy family.”

  “It wasn’t exactly me,” I said, but neither of them seemed to notice.

  “Aw, Celia,” said Dad. Camera finally in hand, he came back over and enveloped us in a bear hug. Mom hugged back just as hard, so I did too.

  If I’d been a character in a musical, this would have been the point where the lights went down on my parents, leaving them slow-dancing in the background like living scenery, as I stepped forward into a lone spotlight for my big solo. It would be a quirky ballad, probably called “I Am Not Hayley Mills” or something like that, and people would applaud when I was done. Maybe they’d even give me a standing ovation.

  Of course, people don’t usually get standing ovations in their living rooms, but I still toyed with the idea of dashing upstairs, pulling out my guitar, and writing that song. It wasn’t worth it, though. I’d tried a million different times to write a million different songs about a million different things, but it was never worth it. My songs always sucked.

  Chapter TWO

  Right from day one, Oliver Parish came to almost every single rehearsal. Whether we were learning songs, blocking scenes, or just talking things through, there he was. Always right on the fringe of the action, blinding flash at the ready. Constantly tempting me to jump off the stage and throttle him with my bare hands—which, t
o my credit, I did not do.

  Meanwhile, my favorite part of rehearsals was watching Simon learn his songs and use them to find his way into the Sweeney character. He was totally bizarre in just the perfect way, and he attacked every song like it came from the deepest part of his soul, instead of from a script. It was, in a way, even cooler than watching him sing to a fake severed cow’s head as Edgar in Bat Boy.

  And he wasn’t the only one doing well. According to Naomi, who had to go to every rehearsal, Callie Zumsky and Dan Quimby-Sato were starting to develop some serious stage chemistry as Johanna and Anthony. Not surprising, since I’d done shows with them before, and they were both seriously talented. But when I asked how Ryan Weiss was doing as Judge Turpin, Naomi just rolled her eyes. She didn’t have to explain. Everyone knew Ryan only got lead roles because he could hit low notes that none of the other guys could. He was the kind of actor who missed his cues all the time, thought every line should be accompanied by a sweeping arm gesture, and always looked vaguely angry.

  But as bad as Ryan was, Vicky Willoughbee was even worse. Sure, she was okay at remembering lines, but that was about it. No matter how much direction Miss Delisio gave her, she remained as expressionless and monotonous as a robot. I kept waiting for someone to call her on it, but Miss Delisio, Simon, and everyone else kept saying how great she was, and Oliver Parish kept taking pictures and smiling proudly at her.

  It was the strangest thing. “Vicky’s so nice” and “Vicky’s so pretty” and “Vicky’s so talented” swirled constantly around me, and nobody ever said anything about how the rest of us were actually singing and acting, while Vicky was just . . . saying words.

  I tried talking to Naomi, but all she did was shake her head at me. “Don’t get all catty about it,” she said. “I know you wanted that part, but it isn’t Willoughbee’s fault, okay?”

  That shut me right up. Maybe Naomi had a point. Maybe I was being too critical—even petty. And since petty wasn’t a thing I ever wanted to be, I kept my head down and concentrated on learning my songs, figuring out my character, and staying out of everyone else’s business.

  Which would have worked great, had I not happened to overhear voices from the band room during rehearsal one Tuesday night.

  While Simon and Danny Q went through their first scene for the bazillionth time, I sneaked out to retrieve my French workbook. As I reached my locker, I heard two people talking. This wasn’t unusual, since the drama club was far from the only group that stayed at school after hours, but these voices were speaking in low, urgent tones, which smacked of secrecy. And that, of course, piqued my interest. I followed the sound to the band room door. The lights were off inside, but the door was cracked open. So I listened.

  “And it’s not just the play,” a female voice was saying. “I mean, it is the play, but it’s everything else, too.”

  Vicky. I hadn’t even noticed that she wasn’t upstairs in the theater. She sounded so different when she wasn’t speaking in her annoying monotone.

  “But that was what you wanted,” said a male voice that I couldn’t place.

  “Yeah,” she said, and I heard a hint of a sniffle. “But it’s too much. I can’t get away. It’s like everyone wants something from me, all the time. I hear my name everywhere. A football player hit on me yesterday, for god’s sake.”

  The male voice let out a low laugh.

  “It’s not funny, Oliver! Did you know there’s a petition going around to vote me into the student council? As the president? Sophomores can’t even run for student council, and the election was back in September!”

  I pressed my ear closer to the door. First the musical, now the student council? What the hell was that about? And what did Oliver have to do with it?

  “Do you want to undo it?” he asked.

  “Yes!” she said, with more emotion than she’d given to the entire script of Sweeney Todd. “Wait a sec. Would I have to use my third to undo it?”

  “Yes,” Oliver replied.

  “But then I’d be wasting two,” she said. “I don’t know. This is too much. Why didn’t you just do it right in the first place?”

  “Do it right?” came his affronted reply. I tensed. “I did it exactly like you wanted. Exactly. That’s as right as it gets. It’s not my fault you can’t deal with it.”

  I braced myself for her to yell, or to cry, or to throw some accusation back at him. But all that followed was silence, which was even more unnerving. I waited, but after a full fifteen seconds passed, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I peeked into the band room. Vicky was sitting in one of the black plastic chairs, resting her hands on a music stand and looking troubled. There was no sign of Oliver.

  She jumped up when she saw me. “Margo. Did you hear . . . ?” Instead of finishing the question, she made a vague gesture at the space around herself.

  “I heard you fighting,” I said. Her eyes went wide behind her glasses, but she didn’t say anything. “Where’d he go? Are you okay?”

  She gave a weak little laugh, ignoring my first question. “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just . . . Never mind. I’m fine.”

  “Oh. All right.” An awkward silence descended, and she made no move to fill it. So I did instead: “What was the thing about the student council?”

  Vicky’s gaze grew sharp. “You were listening. Did you follow me down here?”

  “No! I just came down to get my, um, my French book,” I finished lamely, painfully aware of my empty hands.

  “Sure you did.” She skirted around me, heading for the door. “Just leave me alone, okay? Why can’t everyone just leave me alone?”

  For nearly a week, I kept an eye on Vicky and Oliver, just in case their behavior yielded any more clues to what the band room fight had been about. But aside from acting noticeably cooler toward each other, neither of them did anything particularly noteworthy. Oliver kept taking pictures; Vicky kept not being able to act. That was all. Maybe I’d been imagining things, I decided eventually. Maybe all I’d witnessed was a run-of-the-mill breakup fight.

  So I stopped paying attention to them and went back to concentrating on the important things. Like watching George play, and listening to Simon sing.

  And doing some singing of my own.

  Once I started digging my claws into Toby’s music, I began to get a feel for who his character was. His songs all had a brash, jaunty quality to them. A distinctly boyish quality. I sang them over and over again, until I could imagine the musical phrases seeping through my skin, settling deep in my bones, and becoming part of me—changing not only the way I sang his songs, but the way I spoke his lines, and even the way I moved onstage.

  I started walking differently during rehearsals. I’d never thought much about the way I walked, but now that I was paying attention, I noticed I had a tendency to swing my hips from side to side, just a little bit. But when I was playing Toby, I held my hips straight, like a boy would, and it had a weird ripple effect on the rest of my body. I found myself angling my head and shoulders differently when I talked to people. I took bigger steps. I swaggered. All because of a few short, surprisingly brilliant songs.

  “You’re doing such a lovely job with this role,” said Miss Delisio during one of our rehearsal breaks. “I knew it would be a challenge for you, but I had a feeling you’d be up for it.” She paused, a frown flitting across her face. “And Margo, I want to thank you for being so mature about my casting decision. I know you wanted to play Mrs. Lovett, and I know you would’ve been wonderful. But I had to do what was best for the whole company. You understand, don’t you?”

  I didn’t, especially since there was no universe in which Vicky playing a lead was best for the company. But I made myself nod. “Sure. I get it.”

  “And you’re having fun playing Toby, aren’t you?” Her eyes were hopeful as they searched mine.

  “That I am,” I said, just to make her feel better. But to my surprise, it was actually kind of true.

  Even George the Music Ninja compliment
ed my work—and this was a guy who never complimented anyone at all. He’d correct people when he had to, and he’d do everything he could to make the singers and the band sound their absolute best—but when everything was going smoothly, he usually just nodded to himself and went “Yup.” But this time was different.

  An entire Thursday evening had been set aside for us to work through my biggest song, which was called “Not While I’m Around.” It was a quietly beautiful song, and my character had to sing it to Vicky’s character, without anyone else onstage. Probably thinking to have a small, intimate rehearsal that reflected the small, intimate nature of the scene, Miss Delisio let Naomi off the hook that night, and even asked Oliver not to come and take pictures.

  Since George and I were the first ones there, he suggested we go over my song while we waited for Miss Delisio and Vicky. With his clunky boots working the pedals of the crappy school piano, George took me through the song twice: once to listen to how I’d been singing it on my own, once more to make suggestions. They were clever, nitpicky things—the softening of a line here, or the lengthening of a note there—and I had a lot of fun taking his notes. When we were finished, he dropped his hands into his lap and gave me a calculating look.

  “You’re good. You know that?”

  My jaw literally dropped, and a moment passed before I managed to speak. “Thanks. That’s, wow, that’s really nice of you to say.”

  “It’s not nice. It’s just true.” He pointed a finger at me. “You are damn good. Darn good. You even allowed to say ‘damn’ here, or will those morons on the school board . . . ? Never mind. Anyway, your voice. You’ve got substance there. Depth. You write songs, too? You seem like the type who writes songs.”

  “Yeah.” I paused, surprised at myself. I never told people about that. “Badly, though,” I added quickly.

  “You being modest? Tell me straight.”